| rev:text
| - 5 years later, and I still miss this place.
My aunt worked here for close to 10 years so in some ways it's a childhood memory. It wasn't at all perfect, but it had been around for close to 50 years and hadn't been updated in a while unfortunately. (Another thing, the main tower had only been around for 16 years at the time of implosion......yeah, hardly what I would call "outdated" The Mirage is older than that!).
I've always been strangely fascinated by the place, constantly reading up on it's history and whatnot. When it first opened in 1958 it was the largest hotel in the world (at about 1000 rooms at that, which by today's standards is somewhat small), and judging from the aerial shots of it I've seen from when it first opened as well as the 1960s the place was pretty epic, even by today's standards. It must have been quite the chore to get to the casino if your room was all the way in the back. The marquee was simple, but beautiful, and it also had the coolest. logo. ever. (Up until the 80's when it was changed to a lame Helvetica font, talk about messing up a good thing)
The place was dark, smoky and had a low ceiling, which pumped the place full of character. You could almost feel the sketchy mob history of the place just walking through it (another thing most people don't know is that shortly after the Stardust opened they incorporated a neighboring hotel called the Royal Nevada into the building which they used up until the day the place closed. It was the little shopping mall section at the south end of the building).
I also believe it could have been haunted. In the less active mall area there was a rather eerie feeling. All of which makes the place even more awesome.
I'm still convinced the owners are crazy to have closed down and imploded this building. Yes, it was no Bellagio or Venetian, but why does everyone expect every place on The Strip to be exactly the same now? The Strip seems to get more and more monotonous every day, I have nothing against progress but that doesn't mean we need to destroy everything that makes Vegas "Vegas". It was imploded in 2006 (or was it early 2007? I'm having trouble remembering) to make way for the Echelon (I.E. a blatant copycat of the Wynn), a project which was stopped in it's tracks less than a year after construction began. People try to tell me "it was necessary" or "it was good for the future" but if you had a choice between a glamorous icon of local history and an abandoned construction site and/or signs advertising empty promises which one would you choose?
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)